


The Religion of the Sun-Father

by chaemera



Series: Victorian Eldritch [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 01:20:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10866072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaemera/pseuds/chaemera
Summary: An expansion of the predominant religion within the Victorian Eldritch world.





	The Religion of the Sun-Father

# Some titles of the god figure

  * He Who Birthed the Universe from Flame
  * The Brilliant Shard of Existence
  * The Fulminating Glory
  * The Sun-Father



Others continue this general trend, you get the idea.

# General Overview

To call the Sun-Father’s religion monotheistic is not entirely accurate, but neither is it entirely wrong.

In the beginning, there was Emptiness. Then came Separation: what Was became separated from what was Not. And what Was, was Him. He looked at what was Not, and in observing it gave it form. And He looked at Himself, that which Was, and in so doing so gave it form as well. His first creations were experiments, birthed from ignorance, curiosity, and simple chance: a child moving its hand creates shapes in sand, and so too were His first creations. As He learned, He became more careful, more refined, and His creations became stronger, able to hold their shape without dissolving back into Him or the Not as soon as His attention left them. He crafted the heavens, the earth, and all things therein. But even He could not maintain everything, for though He was great, and powerful, he was not Everything. He was only a part of Everything, and the Not would not answer Him. So He created helpers, to see to things like Time and Life and Destiny, and arrayed them to keep everything working properly.

As time wound on, those that lived among His creations sometimes distinguished themselves in His eyes or those of His Assistants (not always in good ways). These became the first of the Saints (and Sinners). The Saints were given smaller portions of the Assistants’ purviews to oversee, thus further smoothing the function of His creations. The Sinners were chastised and cast back into the world to learn from their mistakes, burdened with the knowledge that there was a Grand Work and that they had Failed.

# Symbolism and Iconography

The sun-in-glory is the primary symbol of the Sun-Father’s religion, unsurprisingly, and gold is His favored metal largely because of how it shines and its color, not out of any hunger for material wealth. What use has He for money, after all?

White, crimson and gold are His primary colors, generally arrayed as a white field with a crimson border and His Sun in gold thereon.

# Theological Structure

There is no afterlife as such. People who establish themselves as a superior upstanding example of some virtue may be elevated to Sainthood, but that is simply regarded as shedding mortality to assist Him in His Grand Work. It is not really a reward, more like being chosen to perform a very important task.

Reincarnation both is and is not a feature in the religion. When someone is born, they have been birthed from Him, spiritually speaking. When someone dies, they are generally accepted to be taken back into Him, rejoining the Divine. Only if someone becomes a Saint or a Sinner do they step outside this cycle. The Sinners are forcibly reincarnated, since they obviously didn’t get it right the first time. While some would argue that reincarnation hardly seems like a punishment, it is often put forward among scholars that knowing that you have Messed Up on a cosmic level is generally enough to drive the lesson home. While the more stuffy members of the clergy would frown to hear it described such, many village priests describe it as the Cosmic Dad Frown in an attempt to lessen it to something mortals can conceptualize a bit more easily.


End file.
